What if I told you the best way to study material was to hand write your own flashcards?
Yeah, I’m not making flashcards for every term in every test either so I know you’re probably thinking, “OK, if that’s the best way to study, is there a second best way I can try?”
Maybe! Although there are benefits to hand writing your own notes and flashcards for studying, because it helps you process and learn information both when you write them and when you read and study them, creating your own flashcards can be a daunting process. When you have a lot of material to learn, you might avoid preparing for a test because it is too overwhelming.
That’s where I think Quizlet can be a great resource. First, you need to find the study material that fits your exam on Quizlet. Luckily, thousands of students and teachers have come before you and have created study sets for almost any academic knowledge topic I have searched for. Even better, often kids from your own school or your own teacher will have created study sets for you and your classmates. This is best because it will follow closely the way your teacher teaches.
Once you find a set of cards that matches what you need to learn, you can copy them to your own new list. This is a good option because then you can add cards or add more information to cards in a way that helps you study, based on the study guide or other information you’ve been given.
Often, students say they study by reading through the cards. This is a good start to studying, but it is not enough when learning new material. Flipping through flashcards is too passive and creates the false belief that you understand things that have passed in front of your reading eyes. While reading the flashcards maybe enough to make the material familiar to you, really mastering it requires a more active process.
Luckily, Quizlet has many features that help you interact with the cards in a more productive way.
Quizlet’s Learn feature
If you’re sitting down with a set of material for the first time, you might want to use Quizlet Learn feature. With the learn feature, you are looking at a small set of cards to begin with and choosing the correct answer in a multiple-choice format. You will get feedback about which ones you get right and which ones you get wrong and the system keeps track of how many terms you have got cracked. After you get the item correct in multiple choice format, the next time you see it will be in a fill in the blank format. This takes the demand on your memory from recognition to explicit expression of the answer. This explicit, or declarative, memory is harder to achieve than just the recognition memory. So you’ll have to go through the cards more than one time to get to that level.
Other ways to use Quizlet
For some sets of material, or some students, the learn feature might not be the way you like to study. Instead, click through the deck of cards, saying the answer to yourself before you flip over to see the material on the back, and star any cards that you do not get right.
On your next pass through the cards, you can study only the starred cards. using the stars, you can set up a variation of the spaced repetition system that is so helpful for studying and memorizing new material. Quizlet is not really designed to sort cards into categories based on how well you know the material, but you can use the Stars to roughly approximate this system.
Create your own
There are so many card sets available on Quizlet that you might not need to make your own cards. But maybe you should! One benefit of making flashcards is that you have to think about and organize the information in your brain before you can put them on cards. You can type the information into a document and then upload it to Quizlet or type it right into the card maker. Be sure not to cram too much information onto your cards and write them in a way that you can study either the front or the back and remember what is on the other side.
Print them out
I’m not a person who usually prefers paper. I tend to use digital forms for documents, notes, communication, and anything else that I can get in digital form. People will say do you want me to make a copy of that for you? And I’ll say oh no I’ll just lose it.
But sometimes, there’s no substitute for having a physical reminder in your hand to study from. I was studying for a big exam a couple years ago and a friend who was studying for the same exam printed out a set of cards from Quizlet and gave me a copy. I cut them apart and studied them and there was definitely something satisfying about seeing the pile of cards that I knew growing while the cards that I was still studying were part of a smaller and smaller pile.
Don’t let the idea of writing out flashcards for every fact you are studying stop you from using flashcards to study! Find the info you need on Quizlet or make your own. Study on your computer or put the app on your phone to study on the go! You’re going to nail this test!
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